


Potential and Possibility

by Leonawriter



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Crossing Timelines, Fic that started life as a speculative idea Tumblr post, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Pronouns now edited due to gender reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-05
Updated: 2017-07-05
Packaged: 2018-11-23 20:06:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11409282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leonawriter/pseuds/Leonawriter
Summary: Timelines only get tangled when more than one incarnation of a Time Lord happen to be in the same time and place. When Missy briefly meets Five, the only forgetting that’s done is the ordinary kind. Until memories come back years and years later, of course.





	Potential and Possibility

Missy - after somehow surviving and escaping, because of course she does - winds up accidentally ending up in part of the Doctor’s past timeline. She’s from quite a ways beyond it the events of the Mondasian ship and her near-death, but here’s the Doctor - and instead of someone who recognises her, he asks cordially who she is, what she chooses to go by, and she gets a lump of nostalgia for old time’s sake at the sight of cricket clothes and celery. And because she knows that this isn’t going to be doing anything fuzzy to either of their memories and the Doctor shouldn’t _have_  future knowledge of the fact that she’s gone over to stand with him (or in his terms, ‘turned good’) before his time, she actively pretends she isn’t a future incarnation of the Master.

It gets increasingly difficult to not make references to their childhood, or past adventures, or things like that in general. They keep getting into arguments, which is dangerous, because she knows they’re more likely to say things in the heat of the moment that they - let’s face it, mainly _she_  - will regret later. Potential realisations, things like that.

But in the end, the Doctor just sees her as an eccentric Time Lady who just happened to be in the area, who felt like helping out even if he vastly didn’t approve of some of her methods. Who he feels is familiar on a bone-deep level, but can’t put his finger quite on _why._

When the Doctor sees her again in the events regarding the Nethersphere, he’s too distracted by the fact that she’s created a Cyberman army, that she’s back at all, that she’s _kissing_  him, why is she doing  _that_  - any sense of familiarity with the regeneration gets buried under the fact that of course she’s familiar, she’s the _Master_.

And then he sees her die (except not really, and he doesn’t even believe she’s dead) and he’s too concerned about Clara, and promises, and he’s _tired_  - if he does remember then, it’s tinged with bitterness, because he’s probably making the memory fit with what he wants it to be, out of misplaced sentimentality.

She helps him, but then, she also nearly gets his best friend killed, so anger overrides the growing sensation that something is building up - a meeting in timelines, where something is going to make sense.

And then, the Vault. He’s alone, and given how well things had gone with Gallifrey last time he’d been there they might as well be the last of their kind for all the good their people would do for them. _I’ll learn to be good_ , she says, and something slots into place. Not _hope_ , no - it’s far, far too soon and early for that. _Potential_ , though - yes. _Possibility._ And it’s something to latch onto and hold with hall his might.

Losing first Bill, then Missy walking off with her past self, then sending Nardole off to help the children - he didn’t know how he wound up back in his TARDIS, somewhere in space, although there were stars, and where there were stars there was hope, and he’d found himself remembering all of the people who had come to count on him - he couldn’t go yet. Not yet.

_(The fact that Missy was in those memories with everyone else, calling his name, made him wonder what she was up to now, whether she’d been able to get out of that ship, or if she was still down there somehow. He’d promised that he would watch over her body for a thousand years, and he’d only managed a fraction, and he feels like he’s failed her somehow. But the fact that she’s there, also gives him hope, even if he doesn’t understand why.)_

Interacting with his first self gives him a new perspective on things, and reminds him somewhat of his previous misadventures with his own other incarnations, as well.

Regeneration gives an entirely new outlook, has her forget a few things, redecorate - the usual. With no Missy, there’s no reason to go back to Bristol, except to collect his things before she leaves it too late and might accidentally land several years later and find that everything’s been, horror of horrors, _donated to charity_. Which normally she wouldn’t mind, but it isn’t so much about what things are worth as it is that those things meant something to her, in her previous life, and some even meant a lot to her in this one still.

The University feels distant and hollow, without Bill, without Nardole, and knowing that the Vault is empty, knowing that there won’t be any piano music drifting by as he walks down to check up on how things are going. There’s no longer any reason for her to stay, far too many ghosts, and so she packs up and she leaves, and it’s almost - almost, but not quite - as though she’d never been there at all.

Some time later finds her alone in her TARDIS and trying on clothes in the wardrobe, slinging a long red scarf around her neck that she’s tempted to keep, just in case she finds himself in somewhere like Antarctica again. This incarnation doesn’t seem to like the cold _-_

_“You almost got yourself killed, you idiot - we might not get along right now, but it’s the sort of thing that’d end up disappointing both of us. Not to mention, your face is too cute and fresh to go changing again so soon at my expense.”  
_

For a moment it was almost as though he could see her old friend behind her in the mirror, hear her speaking not far from her ear - but perhaps that was the regeneration energy still affecting her now, not long after this change, because she was _sure_  that her own reflection had wavered in the mirror, and she hadn’t been seeing herself, but instead, her fifth self-

And that was when she remembered, and that was when she _realised_.

Missy. _Missy -_ that had been _her._  All the way back then. She didn’t know how, but there was no one else it could have been.

The Doctor sat down in her empty TARDIS and put her still new face in her still new hands, not knowing whether to laugh or cry or both, because _Missy, you wonderful woman._   _You're doing it._

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a general ‘I’ve got this great idea’ text post but then I realised ‘whoops, this is turning into flash fic’, so... I edited some bits near the beginning to not be so meta and so on. And for all I know the bits I’ve done about the next Doctor will be completely jossed when the Christmas special comes around, but I don’t even mind.


End file.
